Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  “You should have done it earlier.”

  “Instead of spending every minute of my free time, of which I have so little that it fits into a flea’s navel, with you?”

  “Okay. Got it. But I can’t just ‘take you Topside.’ You don’t even have a Topside suit.”

  “I’m sure the Ritz concierge can rent me one.”

  “He can. After you hand him your certification card. The course takes at least two wake cycles.”

  “Why? You just put on a puffy suit, then walk around. Kevin does that in the snowman costume nine shows a week.”

  “Walking around Topside isn’t difficult…just dangerous. The only thing between you and vacuum is Flextex fabric. Flextex is long on impermeability and reflectivity, and short on durability. The suit’s lined with a conductive heating and cooling grid. But without the suit’s battery and oxygen tank, you’re dead anyway.”

  “Oh.”

  “Direct-sun temperatures can be one hundred degrees C. That’s plus two hundred twelve degrees in old-money Fahrenheit. But as soon as you step into a black shadow, the temperature drops instantly. That’s the range a Topside suit protects. Short-exposure daytime.”

  “Daytime? Somebody dissed me once for saying the Moon had daytime.”

  “On the surface, the Moon has days. And nights. Night temperature is minus one hundred seventy-three degrees C. That’s minus two hundred seventy-nine degrees in old-money Fahrenheit. Night-rated suits are strictly for the Emergency Rescue pros.”

  “I thought the law was everybody had to have a Topside suit.”

  “Permanent residents, yes. The law passed after the 2059 Breaches. Half of the first human mining crews froze, or decompressed, because they couldn’t cross a few hundred meters of surface to move from a breached tunnel to an intact tunnel.

  “The resident suit isn’t a real Topside suit. It’s a Pressurized Lunar Escape Suit. The PLES battery and oxygen last maybe thirty minutes. The old airlocks were supplemented with redesigned ones when the complex expanded west. PLES suits are junk, built to satisfy an obsolete law.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know everything about?”

  The guy with the headset and chipboard returned. “Four minutes, Ms. Lavender.”

  Ice spun while she watched herself in the mirror, shimmied some of her dance moves, then smoothed her costume back into place over her bumps.

  She said, “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, but you can’t figure out a way to take me Topside after the show?”

  “It’s not a matter of figuring something out. It’s dangerous. Going Topside uncertified, or aiding and abetting another to do it, is still against the law. It’s really a matter of principle.”

  She wriggled her bottom while she watched it in the mirror, then tugged at her skirt to straighten its back seam. “Final offer. Take me Topside after the show, and when we get back, I’ll let you touch my bumps. All of them.”

  Even a principled man has his price.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  I met Ice outside the Armstrong’s stage door, after the Frost Queen made her final curtsies.

  As we rode the slidewalk side by side, she hummed along with music in her head, danced, and spun back flips.

  People sliding toward us in the opposite lane smiled. Maybe they recognized her. More likely she just projected exuberance.

  I said, “I take it you were good today?”

  “I was invincible today. I always finish a project strong…because I’m sick of it and jacked to move on to the next one. Plus, the hiatus between projects is like a furlough from my prison.”

  If she would be free again, however briefly, among her beloved elephants, I loved her more for it. Even though it would break my heart.

  If I was a project that she was already sick of and she was already jacked up about the next guy’s pecs, my heart would be shattered beyond repair.

  With her bumps on the line, I shut up.

  But if I had asked her which it was and shared what was in my heart, perhaps things would have ended differently.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  The abandoned pre-2059 passages were sealed from the new areas by Airtights, marked “Hazard.” The passages and airlocks remained, just in case. But even entering the passages broke the law. Every parent in the Moon forbade every kid in the Moon from entering them.

  Therefore, every kid in the Moon who wasn’t an utter dooz had dodged the sensors, snuck through the Airtights, and explored the passages. Some of us more than others.

  Guided by my utility light’s beam and by my fingers on the passage’s cold, bare, rock wall, we had arrived at the old Topside Egress lock nearest the new areas.

  Behind me, Ice’s whisper echoed in the dark, “This place is colder, creepier, and stinkier than I expected.”

  A principled man would have said, “You’re right. Let’s go back.” However, her deal was Topside first, bumps after. Failure was not an option.

  I said, “But we’re here.”

  I shrugged out of my backpack, then unloaded it.

  While Ice had played the Frost Queen one last time, I had retrieved my PLES Topside suit and helmet from home. And also the never-worn PLES Topside suit and helmet that I had grown out of the prior month, which Mom hadn’t gotten around to turning in for credit.

  I gathered the smaller suit and helmet, stood, then shone my light on the control console that cycled open the lock’s inner, then outer, doors.

  I said, “Go behind that, strip naked. Everything. And do it fast.”

  In the dark I didn’t see the slap coming. It spun my head, and I dropped my light.

  She said, “If you thought that was my deal, you don’t know me at all. And I don’t know you.”

  I retrieved my light as I rubbed my cheek.

  I wasn’t even precisely sure how placental mammals like us did “that,” so her inference seemed monstrously unfair.

  I said, “Topside suits heat and cool by conduction against bare skin. We have to be naked inside them. Topside sundown’s in forty-three minutes. That’s our literal deadline to be back inside.”

  “Oh.”

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  Never underestimate a stage actress’s quick-change ability.

  When she emerged from behind the console, she was Topside-ready, except for her phone in one mittened hand.

  I said, “Our phones can’t go past here. Most of the fail-safes in these passages are dead, but they left in place the sensors that shut down the lock in case somebody tries to open it from inside. Phones trip the sensors. I discovered that the hard way.”

  She pouted at me through her faceplate. “Just one selfie? With the Earth behind me? Because ‘no picture, nothing happened.’”

  I shone my light on a yellow stripe on the passage floor. “You cross that line, with that phone, and ‘nothing’ is exactly what will happen.”

  She sighed. “Well, that sucks it!”

  But she left her phone alongside mine, on top of our clothes.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  The inner lock had cycled closed behind us, as we stood side by side in the lock’s darkness, watching our helmet displays count down from thirty minutes.

  I said, “You’re hearing me through the intersuit walkie-talkie. If it fails—which it won’t, don’t worry—we can still talk by touching helmets. ’Talkie range is maybe forty meters. So stay right behind me. Shuffle. No running. No jumping. We look at the Big Blue Ball. We say ‘Wow.’ We return. Period.”

  “Don’t worry, Safety Boy. The Frost Queen’s invincible.”

  “Ice, stop. This environment is more unforgivingly hostile than anything you’ve ever experienced.”

  Her snort echoed inside my helmet. “You sure don’t read Variety.”

  The lock evacuated, its outer doors opened, and I led the way out onto the Moon.

  The sun reflected so bright off the landscape that I squinted, even as my faceplate darkened itself.

  The old lock cycled shut behind us.
Ahead stretched a boulder field. The boulders had been ejected by a four-billion-year-old impact, then hadn’t budged or weathered one millimeter since.

  Armstrong had barely missed one boulder like these when he landed in 1969. His footprints, and Aldrin’s, remained in the dust at the Memorial out east. And would remain there for another four billion years.

  Beyond the boulders, the Big Blue Ball floated in the black sky.

  I said, “Worth the trip?”

  Silence.

  The view left newbies mute.

  I let her drink it in.

  I said, “Ice?”

  No answer.

  I turned.

  She was gone.

  Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Why hadn’t I made the Invincible One go first, so I could keep an eye on her?

  I finally spotted her. In a vast, dead landscape, she was the sole moving object. Already distant, she popped up from behind one boulder, then hopped to another, like a flea.

  I skipped toward her, fifteen meters per low stride, kicking dust that didn’t float, while screaming in silent vacuum. She had escaped walkie-talkie range.

  When I finally caught up, she posed, hands-on-hips, staring down on me like a victorious pirate, atop a boulder that resembled the Rock of Gibraltar.

  Inside my helmet, I heard her pant.

  I said, “Show’s over! Come down. Carefully.”

  “God! This is the best. I may never leave the Moon.”

  “Get down here or you won’t.”

  “Fine. But watch this.”

  She hopped once, bounded skyward, somersaulted above my head, then landed feet together, knees bent, on the point of a tilted rock cube three meters behind me.

  She straightened, raised her arms so her body formed a “Y,” then crowed, “And she stuck the landing!”

  The cube had balanced just as it landed for four billion years, until her miniscule mass unbalanced it.

  The cube tipped beneath her, and she toppled backward into the dust. Relieved of her weight, the cube plopped back, without a sound.

  Ice shrieked through the walkie-talkie.

  I reached her in one skip, knelt beside her.

  She squeezed her helmet’s sides with both hands as she thrashed her head. Behind her faceplate, she hissed through clenched teeth. “It’s broken.”

  “Your suit’s not broken. You’d be dead.”

  “Not my suit. My sucking ankle!”

  “You’re sure?” I turned to look at her legs.

  “Of course I’m sure! I’ve broken six of ’em. Just get this father-sucking rock off it.”

  She lay on her butt in the Moondust. The cube pinned her right leg. Below the knee it was…

  My head snapped back and I sucked air so hard that my throat whistled. I nearly barfed inside my helmet.

  She said, “How does it look?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “At acting, you suck.”

  I reached out and pushed the cube. It didn’t budge. I stepped close and pushed again using my shoulder. Nothing.

  She said, “Put more weight behind it.”

  “Ice, this is the Moon. I don’t have more weight. With a lever long enough, I could move the world. But I don’t have a lever either.”

  “Then grab my leg and yank. Say ‘On the count of three.’ Then count two and yank. So I don’t tense up. That’s what they do when I dislocate something during a show. I suck it up and the show goes on. Suffering is a child actor’s life.”

  Inside my helmet I shook my head. “No. Hundred percent probability your suit will tear. We couldn’t even cut off your foot, if we had a knife, because cutting your suit would kill you.”

  “Stop cheering me up. Jason, it’s no big deal. Just leave me here. Run and get help. I’ll just suck it up ’til you get back.”

  “You don’t understand. In vacuum, when the sun disappears, the temperature drops like somebody flicked off an old-money light switch. And by the time I phone, and ER gets here…”

  She didn’t speak as it sunk in.

  Then she said, “Even more reason that you have to go. There’s no sense both of us…”

  She turned her face away inside her helmet, so I couldn’t see her eyes…but I heard her sob.

  I glanced at the chrono display projected on the inside of my faceplate.

  Four minutes to sundown.

  I stood and scraped pumice against her suit with my boot’s instep.

  She said, “What are you doing?”

  “Insulating us.”

  “Us?”

  “I’m piling it up around you. Moondust has about as much insulating value as it sounds like it does. But it’s all we have. Then I’ll lay on top of you.”

  “That’s a cheese excuse to touch my bumps.”

  “Why are you joking?”

  “To distract me from panicking.” She paused. “Jason, will any of that really help? Or are you just distracting me?”

  “Shut up.”

  I packed the pumice around her. It was a pathetic imitation of insulation. Then I laid on top of her. With two puffy suits between us, it was a pathetic imitation of touching her bumps.

  I thumbed off her walkie-talkie function, and her internal helmet display, by pressing the Buddy Button on her helmet’s side, then shut my walkie-talkie off, too.

  Seconds later, she realized that she could no longer hear me breathing. Her eyes widened, her lips moved, and I felt her squirm beneath me.

  I lowered my head until our faceplates touched, then said, “Don’t panic. Can you hear me now?”

  “Yes. Not as well.”

  “I cut both our walkie-talkies. We need heat more than anything else, and the ’talkies eat battery.”

  “How much time will all this you’re doing buy us?”

  The answer was maybe an extra minute or two.

  I said, “Maybe enough.”

  “This is the worst feeling-up I’ve ever had.”

  I said, “Well, they were working in better conditions.”

  “There is no ‘they.’ You were going to be the first…and the last…for as long as I lived. Now only half of those lines will be true. Jason, leave me…while you can.”

  I said, “Save your breath. I mean really. It wastes oxygen.”

  We both saved our breath and lay as still as a Popsicle sandwich.

  I had chosen to get her into this. My choice had been a bad choice, but I was taking responsibility for it.

  The outside temperature, visible on my helmet display, started dropping. So did my suit’s inside temperature. Telling her would just make her breathe faster.

  She whispered, “Jason, I can’t feel the toes on my good foot. And I can’t feel the broken one at all now.”

  I hadn’t thought it through, but just drifting off painlessly was a better way to die than explosive decompression—or driving off a cliff.

  She whispered again. “In a few minutes I really will be the Frost Queen. I told my father this morning that if I played her one more time after today’s show, I would die. Bad joke.”

  She cried, so softly that I could barely hear.

  The battery and oxygen warning lights on her helmet crest, which were there to inform first responders, began flashing red. My red lights had been flashing in my interior display for a while.

  When they all went solid red, we were done. But after sundown we would be done anyway. If I had any last words, and expected her to hear them, it was time.

  I said, “I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I will love you forever. And I know that whatever happens next, somewhere, sometime, we will be together again. And you’ll love me, too.”

  She was so near the end that it took me awhile to figure out what she mumbled back.

  What she had said was, “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  The worst was that, as the dark became absolute, her lips were four inches from mine.

  But I couldn’t kiss her goodbye.

  ✧ ✧ �
��

  I sat there on the Armstrong Auditorium’s stage, dressed in black, head bowed as I stared down at my hands.

  The huge room was silent, packed SRO with her fans. Their emotion rolled forward, from way back in the cheap seats, and I felt it wash over me on the stage. She had told me about that feeling once. And finally, I understood it.

  But the emotion wasn’t for me, it was for her. Isis Lavender was more beloved than I had ever realized. Her performances had touched so many during a career cut short.

  Ice’s mother sat in the front row, just beyond the orchestra pit, in seat 1K—the seat I had occupied the first time I saw her. Her mother dabbed her right eye with a hanky, then tilted her head, dabbed the left. She then stretched out her arm and handed the hanky back to my mother, who was sitting across the center aisle.

  Mom blinked, then dabbed at her own eyes.

  It was going to be easier for them. I was the one who would have to suck it up, and stand up, and speak.

  I thought I would be able to hold it together. Her father had told me he thought he couldn’t. I couldn’t tell whether he had predicted accurately, because he wasn’t seated with his wife. I couldn’t even see him.

  The guy seated alongside me whispered, “Will you say anything to console her grieving fans?”

  I leaned toward him and said, “I might say that her grieving fans can suck it.”

  He recoiled. “What?”

  “Look, I just told you most of the story. The rest is that, when I was late, my mother, because the invisible cord was still attached, checked my phone’s location. She found it stationary, in an off-limits passage. She called me. I didn’t answer. She did the right thing and called Emergency Rescue, even though the problem could have been nothing. Our clothes and phones, alongside the airlock console, told ER everything. They pulled us in from the Lunar night, one minute short of dead. They say my improvisations had bought the time that saved her life. And, less consequentially, mine. That was nine years ago.”

  I said to the Variety reporter, “Having you here today is her agent’s and the studio’s idea, not ours. If he, and they, and her grieving fans, think her retiring at twenty-three is a ‘tragedy,’ they can suck it.”